Sunday, January 06, 2013

Excitement in our neighbourhood

We had a bit of excitement in our neighbourhood yesterday. Our street is a dead-end place which connects to one of the main streets in our area. There's a bus that runs on that street and yesterday, a passenger on the bus took another passenger hostage. The police blocked off the street so that traffic couldn't get through while they negotiated with the hostage-taker. They brought in the tactical squad and dogs, too.

According to comments on a news story, the hostage-taker first demanded McDonald's, which he got, and then heroin, which he didn't get. He claimed to have a gun and a syringe containing his HIV+ blood but no weapons were found.

Seeing the police out in force was a little scary. We didn't know what was going on at first and we weren't about to go out and ask the police about the situation. The first news report we saw said that they were asking people to stay away from the area. This got me to thinking: what if they'd evacuated our street? The bus wasn't that far away and if there'd been a bomb on it, we would definitely have been evacuated. Well, they would have tried to evacuate us: we were in the basement and I almost never hear the doorbell when I'm down there. Ian was playing a video game and we definitely wouldn't have heard anyone at the door.

The idea that our area could be evacuated and I wouldn't know it is frightening. Thankfully, we don't get a lot of hostage-takers on buses around here so we don't need to do something about it today .... but we need to do something about it soon by installing a doorbell in the basement. If the police come to my door, I want to know that they're there and answer it. Sure, it would mean that I'd hear and answer the door to annoying sales people, but I think that's a small price to pay.

BTW, Gozer really wanted to bark at the police dog when we took her out yesterday evening. Silly girl!